Dutch Dairy Farmer Escapes Ukraine

By Hari Yellina
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Representational Photo by Ave Calvar on Unsplash

It was a day that Dutchman Kees Huizinga, a huge dairy farmer in Ukraine, never imagined would come, but when Putin’s Russian army launched a war against the European nation, the entire world was shaken. Kees and his two business partners have been running their big 15,000 hectare farm ‘TOV Kischenzi’ in the centre of Ukraine in peace for the past 20 years. Agriculture in Ukraine, also known as Europe’s breadbasket, has performed admirably in recent years, with excellent commodity prices. At least, it was doing well until February 24, when neighbouring Russia invaded Ukraine on the orders of its desperate dictator president, Vladimir Putin.

When Kees learned of the news, he promptly returned to the Netherlands with his wife Emmeke and their two young kids via Romania. After a week, Kees returned home to be a voice for Ukrainian farmers in the west, leaving his farm in the capable hands of the 400 employees. The farm, which is located 200 kilometres south of Kyiv in the village of Kischenzi, has 2000 Holstein Friesian dairy cows and 450 sows. The area is primarily utilised for growing export products such as wheat, corn, and sunflowers, but there is also 350 hectares of drip-irrigated vegetables. At least until February 24, when neighbouring Russia, acting on the orders of its desperate dictator president, Vladimir Putin, decided to intervene.

Kees, who speaks Ukrainian and Russian fluently, said: “We started with 1000 hectares and expanded to 15,000 hectares, which are primarily leased because foreigners are not allowed to own land there.”I expected to fight a figurative war against the conventional enemies of food production, such as bugs, weeds, and disease, when I became a farmer, but I didn’t anticipate to be in an actual battle zone with a lethal opponent. “There are roughly 1100 members of the Ukraine Agrarian Association who farm a total of 3.5 million hectares in Ukraine,” Kees stated.

Although a major evaluation of the cropping programme is underway, Kees indicated that work on the farm continues and that the 2000 cows still need to be milked. “The cows were yielding 34 litres per day just before I departed,” Kees remarked. “We milk them twice a day in an 80-unit rotating parlour.” “We feed our cows a mixture of corn silage, alfalfa hay, soybeans, sunflowers, sugar beet pulp, and minerals, with the majority of the components grown on our farm. Our milk is processed at Molikija into liquid milk, butter, cheese, and yoghurts.”


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